This won’t be your average community
meeting!Mosaic Makers is ready to start
work on Reservoir Hill’s first mosaic mural, so we are using our monthly
community meeting as a community arts work session.

More than 100 Reservoir Hill residents and
supporters, students and adults, have contributed ideas to the mural
design. Pam Stein and Lauren Siegel will be coordinating different groups
throughout February to construct the mural. The completed mosaic will be hung on the
outside of John Eager Howard
Recreation Center.

You
helped design the mural. . . NOW you can help construct it!

The
finished product will be the result of dozens of Reservoir Hill folks working together. Please come to the Community
Meeting and lend your hand to the work on the tiling. Everyone is welcome!
Adults and children!

Contributions
in his memory may be sent to Beth Am Synagogue, 2501 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD
21217.

Howard was a
Reservoir Hill native, his family having moved to Reservoir Hill in the
mid-1950s. Living in the house he inherited from his parents on Park Avenue, Howard was a constant presence in Reservoir
Hill, with his cameras slung around his neck. He was also the force behind the
restoration of the fountain at Park Avenue and
Whitelock
Street. He was a dedicated volunteer, devoted member
of Beth Am Synagogue, a long-time member of the National Guard, and a chronicler
of Reservoir Hill life. Howard gave generously of his photographic avocation
and captured many, many moments in the life of Reservoir
Hill.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

As
every reader of RHIC material knows by now, following a multi-year grassroots campaign,
the Maryland General Assembly approved $1.2 billion for city school
construction.It’s an historic
opportunity for Baltimore. It’s new
school facilities, but it’s much more than that.It’s potentially the biggest jobs program the
city has seen in decades.It’s a huge
investment in neighborhoods and a singular opportunity for strategic, holistic,
development in communities- if we are able to seize this historic opportunity.

Reservoir Hill Improvement Council (RHIC)
and Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) are partnering over several months in 2014
to create a comprehensive community plan that would help guide private and public
investment in Reservoir Hill – a strategic investment strategy. To do so, we need
the deep and broad engagement of the Reservoir Hill community, and a wide range of partners.

Since
2010 we have been working to foster some significant development projects that
could mean very positive changes in the community.In the past year we reached an important point:

The
redevelopment of John Eager Howard Elementary School has many unanswered questions, but
the construction of a new facility will commence in 2015, the partnership of RHIC and Child First provides stable staff and organizing resources, and a team of 12 people have been meeting every other week to guide the community's involvement and put together a model of community engagement.

From the successful sale of vacant,
foreclosed houses through the NSP-2 program, Healthy Neighborhoods (HNI) has
sufficient funds to begin redevelopment of vacant houses on Callow Avenue.This investment on the heels of $15 million HNI has invested in Reservoir Hill over the years, will begin eliminating the last concentration of vacant buildings in the community.

HUD riders on the Druid Park Lake Drive
vacant lots are no longer an impediment to a project on those sites and two
neighbors are leading communications with Baltimore Housing and the Department
of Planning to develop a document to guide development there.

Work along the Whitelock Corridor continues to turn vacant lots into public spaces where residents can interact, and most of the vacant space on the 900 block will have been renovated by mid-2014.

We have an extensive set of street change
requests on file with Department of Transportation.

And most recently, RHIC entered a partnership
with Druid Heights CDC, Coppin Heights CDC, and Neighborhood Design Center to
create a North Avenue Streetscape plan from Charles Street west to Hilton.

Not
to underestimate the challenges remaining, but if we make the most of our
relationships with city departments, our non-profit and for-profit partners, and
with broad and deep community engagement, we are collectively poised to stimulate
some major changes in Reservoir Hill.

If
you attended our Annual Meeting last November you heard the public discussion
over how to build on the $15 million investment coming through the
redevelopment of John Eager Howard School. The major topic of the panel discussion at the
Annual Meeting was the need for a community plan to guide and foster more
strategic public and private investment in the communities surrounding schools
undergoing redevelopment.

For
instance, if $15 million is being invested in John Eager Howard Elementary School
and its immediate grounds, perhaps the city should prioritize improvements to
the sidewalks and streets children use to get to and from school, and devote
more funds to rehabbing the 24 vacant houses on the 2200 and 2300 blocks of
Callow Avenue.If some children from
Westside Elementary will attend John Eager Howard when Westside closes there
needs to be a safe streets strategy for the routes taking them to and from
school.If the library on Pennsylvania
Avenue is to remain our closest library, there need to be improvements to North
Avenue that would let parents feel good about their children going there.The list goes on.

A
strategic investment strategy can help school development jump to being
neighborhood development.This calls for
a new tool, a new community planning document, but not just a plan that sits on
a shelf – a vibrant, tool we actively use.We need the analysis and ideas of community members and professional
expertise to create such a plan. And we need the participation of city
departments to ensure that our work gets incorporated into Baltimore Housing,
Department of Transportation, and other departments.

However,
if it were just Reservoir Hill, the impact on other neighborhoods would be limited.
Consequently, our exploration of this subject has included conversations with
the Mayor’s office, city departments, and a range of allies.

Fortunately,
we are not alone in our interest in creating such strategic investing.In
fact, there is citywide interest in promoting more strategic investment in
communities where schools are being redeveloped to maximize the community
development impact of the school investment. This interest is being taken up by
non-profit organizations, architects, and city personnel.Transform Baltimore is very interested in
more strategic use of resources in communities where schools are being
developed.In addition, the concept was
incorporated into Baltimore City Public School System’s citywide 21st
Century Education Expo. And the Baltimore City Department of Planning will
invest significant time to help communities develop such plans

Further,
the grassroots campaign of the last few years to win sufficient funding to redevelop
all city schools as 21st Century school buildings has created the
structures in Transform Baltimore and Baltimore Education Coalition that allow
us to collectively advance creative approaches to school-based neighborhood
revitalization.

NDC
is interested in playing a role in creating models of community planning that
produce tools for guiding such investment along lines that have community
support, and Reservoir Hill will be one of the first communities where such a
model will be developed.

All
told, we are in a good position to develop a strategic investment plan in 2014 that
could produce good results for Reservoir Hill, but which could also offer
lessons for other communities.

At
present, we are in the early stages of putting the project together.The project will have strong technical and community
outreach components.NDC will recruit
four pro-bono professionals to work over several months with RHIC staff, community residents, and institutional partners like Child First, Healthy Neighborhoods,and others.The composition of
this team will be based upon a needs assessment, but could be expected to
include such skills as urban planning, architecture, and real estate
development.

NDC
staff and professionals recruited by NDC will work with RHIC staff,institutional partners, and
community members to ensure that high quality information is gathered and used
in the production of planning products.Simultaneously, a broad and deep community engagement process will
ensure that the products reflect community involvement.

We are currently exploring the composition of the NDC and community teams, and
hammering out our working relationship with the Department of Planning.

We
will have more to report in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for more
information, or to help, contact Rick Gwynallen in the RHIC office at 410.225.7547,
or by e-mail at rgwynallen@reservoirhill.net

Older
residents remember North Avenue as tree-lined, and as a vibrant place where people
shopped, ate, and went in and out of the communities attached to North Avenue.How
to redevelop North Avenue as the asset it once was for communities bordering
the street has been a long standing question.

In 2006, a set of west side community organizations held a series of
meetings to discuss a more strategic approach to improvements along North
Avenue.Independently, Reservoir Hill
residents have worked hard at cleaning and beautifying the median strip along our stretch of
North Avenue.Most of the plantings you see along
those strips is their work.And the
CHOICE Neighborhoods planning process led by Jubilee Baltimore has developed
some options for sections of North Avenue. However, none of these efforts have
produced an actual plan for the full stretch of North Avenue cutting through central-west
Baltimore.

2014
might just be the year for creating such a broadly-supported plan.

In
autumn 2013, Councilman Nick Mosby’s office helped pull together a partnership of
Coppin Heights CDC, Druid Heights CDC, and RHIC to create a new street scape
plan for North Avenue from Charles west to Hilton.The partners are working with Neighborhood
Design Center (NDC) from January 2014 into autumn 2014 to create the design.Very importantly, the Baltimore City
Department of Transportation (DOT) has committed staff to the project.DOT’s participation is vital in order to
ensure that the product emerging from this planning process will be able to be
used by the city. We don’t need another document that sits on a shelf. We need
a tool for actively transforming North Avenue.

NDC
has recruited pro bono professionals to work with task forces in the communities
represented by the three community partners.Each community task force will consist of up to five members of a core
group, which will design a community engagement strategy that maximizes
community involvement in the design process. We need the ideas and energy of every community member early on.

The
Reservoir Hill core group is being assembled with one RHIC Board Member, one
RHIC staff member, one Housing & Development Team member, one person from
south of North Avenue, and another to be selected by the core group.

The
first gathering of all the NDC staff and volunteers, community core groups, DOT
staff, and Councilman Mosby’s office is being held this month.The goals for this meeting are to:

Create a list of up to 3 main goals
for the streetscape within each section of corridor.

Create a list of additional project
stakeholders that should be invited to participate in the design process.

Create an initial community
engagement plan for each section of corridor.

Since
our January Community Meeting was cancelled due to the snow storm, Reservoir
Hill residents can expect the first public meeting on the design process by
early March. We will also be reporting developments and ideas that are being floated in each monthly Community Briefing, on the RHIC blogs, and at each community
meeting.

Our intention is to have the first set
of public meetings and other outreach done by April, so we can develop an
initial draft plan, which will then be presented at public venues and revised,
with the goal of having a finished document in October 2014.

The
resources, community networks, professional expertise, partnerships, and city
participation all exist to make this a reality. We will keep the community well informed of
any progress in the planning process.In
the meantime, if you want to help or discuss the project further, contact Rick
Gwynallen at Reservoir Hill Improvement Council; 410.225.7547; rgwynallen@reservoirhill.net

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Mosaic Makers is ready to
start work on Reservoir Hill’s first mosaic mural. It will be created
indoors but hung on the outside of John
Eagar Howard
Recreation Center.
More than 100 Reservoir Hill students,
residents, and supporters have contributed ideas to the mural design. Pam
Stein and Lauren Siegel will be coordinating different groups throughout
February to construct the mural.

You helped design the mural. . . NOW you
can help construct it!

The finished product will be the result of dozens
of Reservoir Hill folk working together.

Please come and lend your hand to the work on the tiling.

Everyone is welcome! Adults and children!

One panel will be constructed in the John Eager
Howard School
art class.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Friends
& Neighbors, please join us for what promises to be an extraordinary
concert and community experience. As a special feature, six students from John Eager
Howard School
and six Beth Am students will perform with the band.

School Design Team members have
been meeting every two weeks for several months monitoring, collecting community
opinion, and advocating for a school facility that is an asset to the Reservoir
Hill community.

At this meeting, School Design
Team leaders will discuss the status of the design process and key elements of
the newly designed facility.

The
redevelopment of the school is expected in 2015. It will be the largest single
development project in Reservoir Hill to date, and has great potential for
Reservoir Hill families and the community as a whole. This will be a great
opportunity to interact with the School Design Team
members.

A
Comprehensive Community Plan

At our Annual meeting we held an
extensive discussion on the need for strategic public and private investments in
the communities surrounding schools undergoing redevelopment. While the
investment in a new John Eager Howard school facility will be a very significant
and positive development for Reservoir Hill, strategic, seamless investment by
City and State departments, and private sector partners, throughout the
community can maximize school development as full community development. To
achieve this requires a comprehensive plan to guide such investment, drawing
together the diverse projects underway in and around Reservoir Hill and
developing community opinion around new priorities. But not just a plan that
sits on a shelf – a vibrant, tool we actively use.

In autumn 2013 the School Design
Team began outreach to community institutions as a first step in developing the
foundations for such a plan. Now RHIC is entering into a partnership with
Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) to work with community members to create that
plan. This meeting is an opportunity for community members to discuss and shape
this process.

Welcome to Views From the Hill

Views From the Hill is a project of Reservoir Hill Improvement Council. The Council invites guests to speak on topics relevant to urban communities - a wide ranging suject to be sure. The selection of our material is based on the Council's principle of equitable urban development. We encourage readers to respond to our guests and create a lively dialogue. We believe that from frank exchange and dynamic dialogue creative solutions can emerge to the issues that face our cities, urban comunities, and working people.

Opinions expressed on this site are not necessarily endorsed by Reservoir Hill Improvement Council.